Chem 201 Syllabus
Chem 201 Syllabus
The Tuesday office hours are designed for students who need to meet with me personally or in small groups. Those on Thursday
are designed for larger groups and for students who may not be comfortable meeting one-on-one. They are in the spirit of an extra
recitation. It is not, however, my intent to present material or to lecture at these, but to answer questions in a group setting. If
these posted times and dates are not amenable, students should contact me to arrange a meeting.
As of the writing of this document, students are required to bring their ISU
cards in order to gain access to the classroom in Beyer.
Friday, 1:10–2:00 p.m., 1811 Gilman (Section 1), 2104 Gilman (Sections 2, 3), 0312 Gilman (Section 4).
CHEM 201 and 201L are corequisite courses, i.e., students in 201 are required to take 201L at the same time or to have already
received credit in 201L. Students who drop 201L will be required to drop 201 and vice versa. Students who audit CHEM 201 will
be required to drop 201L.
The last day to change a course from audit to credit basis is Friday, 30 August.
The last day to choose to audit a course for the Fall is Monday, 9 September. (I must approve audits.) The audit does not count
towards full-time student status.
The last day to drop CHEM 201 and CHEM 201L is Friday, 1 November.
Student Learning Outcomes: Chemistry 201 teaches advanced aspects of general chemistry while also covering material that
would be taught in a standard one-year general chemistry course. It assumes mastery of knowledge that one should have attained
in a good high school chemistry course. Students completing Chemistry 201 are expected to understand at an intermediate level:
Upon satisfactory completion of the course, students are ready to continue with the majors’ sequence in chemistry (Chemistry
211/211L) in the Spring semester and, if they wish, to take organic chemistry in the Spring semester.
Blackboard Learn: https://bb.its.iastate.edu/. This site provides access to the syllabus, general resources, announcements, answer
keys, and other miscellaneous class materials.
Course Materials: We shall use notes that can be accessed via Blackboard. You may print these out. An optional, recommended
text is Chemistry, The Central Science, 12th Edition (2012) by T. L. Brown, et al., Prentice Hall. (This text is also used in CHEM
177 and 178). The notes were largely written by Professor Gordon Miller and slightly modified and augmented by me. In order to
encourage their careful reading —and, to ferret out any infelicitous errors in content or form—students providing a typed
electronic document with a list of corrections and suggested modifications will receive up to 5 points extra on their highest hourly
examination (among exams #2, #3, or #4).
-1-
CHEMISTRY 201 “Advanced General Chemistry” FALL 2013
(Updated: 29 August 2013)
Mathematics: You should be taking MATH 165 or higher concurrently with this course. Chemistry is a physical science and
requires mathematics for a proper understanding of its concepts. I shall occasionally use calculus during the course.
Lectures: Sessions on Monday through Thursday will typically be lecture periods with opportunities to discuss problems. There
will be 8 invited faculty speakers, who will discuss research activities in their groups. For each of these presentations, a short
questionnaire will be collected at the end of the period. Friday sessions will be discussion periods with a graduate teaching
assistant, and will be the times to administer hourly examinations. Class participation is strongly encouraged.
Grades: A final numerical grade (0-100%) will be based upon performances in:
four hour-long examinations (55% total: 15% for the first examination and 20% each, for the best two of the last three);
a short paper and questionnaires (10%, one third of this grade is based on the questionnaires);
There will be no optional assignments. There will be no “extra-credit” except for correcting and critiquing the course notes as
indicated above and participating in a learning survey to be administered by John Baluyut.
Scores will be maintained using the Blackboard Learn grade book. Plus/minus grading will be used for final grades. Tentative
letter grade assignments are: “A,” 90-100%; “B,” 75-89%; “C,” 50-74%; “D,” 40-49%; F, 0-40%. There is no curve for the
course.
Hourly Examinations: Exams are scheduled for the following dates (Fridays): 6 September; 4 October; 1 November; 22
November. Review sessions will be offered on the Thursday evenings prior to each exam at 7:00 p.m. in 2109 Gilman.
For examinations, you will be permitted a pen or pencil, a calculator, and an 8.5 x 11” piece of paper bearing information you
deem useful on both sides. This sheet must be handed in with your examination. I will supply you with fundamental constants
and other ancillary information. In order to obtain full credit for a question, adequate demonstration of your reasoning is required.
Correct answers with no discussion or derivation will be marked as incorrect. Responses are expected to be legible.
The first hourly examination will be largely based upon material that you should have mastered in high school. Students obtaining
less than 75% on this examination are strongly encouraged to move to Chemistry 177. It will be comprised of, among other
topics:
Conversion of units, for example, moving between molecules or atoms to grams or moles.
Balancing (nonredox) chemical equations.
Stoichiometry:
E.g., for a reaction aA + bB = cC + dD, if so many grams of D were made, how many molecules of A were there, and
other permutations…
Limiting reagent and yield problems.
Empirical formula determination.
Solution stoichiometry.
To this end, you should read Unit 1, pp. 1-8 and pp. 38-55 and be able to work problems 5, 16-23 from Unit 1.
The lowest of your last three hourly examinations (#2, #3, and #4) will be dropped from the computation of your final grade. You
may not drop the grade from the first examination. The final is cumulative and will not be dropped from the computation of the
course grade.
Accommodation will be made for students who provide valid written documentation of medical or personal exigency. Such
accommodation will take the form, for example, of either counting an examination multiple times in the computation of the final
grade or taking an examination early. Neither late examinations nor make-up examinations will be administered.
-2-
CHEMISTRY 201 “Advanced General Chemistry” FALL 2013
(Updated: 29 August 2013)
Problem Sets: You are encouraged and, in some cases, expected to seek literature outside the course materials to answer the
questions. You may work in groups, but assignments that suggest copying will be severely penalized. You must cite any
reference materials and any student colleagues with whom you worked at the end of the assignment you turn in for grading.
Late assignments will not be accepted. Of course, assignments will be accepted early.
Work that contains excessive cross-outs or that is illegible will not be accepted. Papers that bear ratty edges from being torn
out of spiral notebooks will not be accepted. The sheets in your assignment should be stapled together. The graders and I are
not responsible for losing material that has not been securely assembled. Examples of acceptable homework papers are
provided on Blackboard. These papers are taken from a previous offering of Chemistry 325 and are used to illustrate acceptable
form—and, obviously, not content.
There will be five problem sets. Answers will be posted immediately after class (or recitation) on the day the sets are submitted.
Sets #2, #3, and #4 will be due at the beginning of class the day before the scheduled hourly examinations.
Regardless of the number of points assigned to individual problems, Sets #2, #3, and #4 will each bear the same weight; Sets #1
and #5 will have half of this weight. In other words, Sets #1 and #5 are each worth half of a full problem set.
Paper and Questionnaires: A 2-page paper addressing one of the research talks presented during the semester will be due no
later than 1:10 p.m. (start of lecture), Monday, 9 December, the first day of “dead week.” No late papers will be accepted.
(Again, early papers will obviously be accepted.) You will be assigned a faculty member for this paper by 6 September. There
will be presentations through the beginning of November. Graded questionnaires (5 pts. each) will be filled out during or
immediately after each research presentation, and turned in before leaving the classroom.
After hearing the presentation and reading any material posted on Blackboard Learn, you will schedule a time to interview the
faculty member to complete the background for the paper. Students should make every effort possible to meet at the same time
with the faculty member.
Final Examination: The date and time will be announced as soon as it is available. You should assume that the examination
could be scheduled by the registrar for any time during finals week: 16-20 December. If you have 3 final exams on one day, you
may ask the instructor of the course with the smallest enrollment to arrange a different time for the exam. Any student wishing to
make this change must make this request to the instructor no later than 6 December, the last day of classes before the beginning of
the “dead week.” The format will be similar to the hour exams and it will be comprehensive.
-3-
CHEMISTRY 201 “Advanced General Chemistry” FALL 2013
(Updated: 29 August 2013)
Regrading Policy: Any appeal regarding a grade must be made no later than five “school days” after the assessment instrument
(exam, problem set, paper, etc.) has been made available for collection. Any instrument not collected by you after this time will be
submitted for recycling. Instruments submitted for appeal may be subject to complete reevaluation.
Academic Misconduct: Academic Misconduct in any form is in violation of ISU Student Disciplinary Regulations and will not
be tolerated. This includes, but is not limited to, copying answers on tests or assignments, plagiarism, and having someone else do
your academic work. Depending on the act, a student could receive an F grade on the test or assignment, F grade for the course, or
could be suspended or expelled from the University. See the Conduct Code at http://www.dso.iastate.edu/ja for more details and a
full explanation of the Academic Misconduct policies.
Help Center: The teaching assistants are available in the Martha E. Russell Chemistry Help Center and Resource Room located
at 1761 Gilman. This Help Center is staffed by all general chemistry teaching assistants and is open Monday–Thursday, 9:00
a.m.–5:00 p.m.; Friday, 9:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. I am available during office hours or by appointment.
Special Needs: Please address any special needs or special accommodations with me at the beginning of the semester or as soon
as you become aware of your needs. Those seeking accommodations based on disabilities should obtain a Student Academic
Accommodation Request (SAAR) form from the Disability Resources (DR) office (515-294-6624). DR is located on the main
floor of the Student Services Building, Room 1076.
Web site: http://www.dso.iastate.edu/dr/.
Laptops, iPods, Cell Phones, Etc.: No electronic devices of any sort may be used in class. Such devices are abused more than
they are employed in productive ends. Browsing the internet, playing games, listening to music, watching movies, texting,
facebooking, twittering, reading newspapers, solving crosswords, etc. are distracting, disruptive, and disrespectful. If you believe
that it is essential for you to use an electronic device for note-taking, you must present your case to me during the first week of
classes.
Right to Privacy: The Federal Right-to-Privacy Act prohibits the General Chemistry office (1608 Gilman Hall) from public
disclosure of exam scores. You may obtain your exam scores from your TAs during recitations or the Blackboard Learn grade
book.
Laboratory: CHEM 201L is a corequisite laboratory course designed to accompany CHEM 201. The tentative CHEM 201L
syllabus complements the lecture topics. Topics covered in CHEM 201L will not be specifically tested in CHEM 201.
* Early departure for Thanksgiving break is not a valid excuse for missing an examination. Students should plan travel around the
syllabus.
-4-
CHEMISTRY 201 “Advanced General Chemistry” FALL 2013
(Updated: 29 August 2013)
Schedule of Speakers
-5-